A Winter in India

We were very lucky in finding an apartment quickly and right close to where we will be teaching. It is in an area called Bengali Market, in the old part of New Delhi. What that means is that we are in the part that was designed as the new capital by Sir Edwin Lutyens (so it is also known as “Lutyen’s Delhi”). In 1911 the British King (George V) came to India, the first time that a reigning British monarch had come here. One thing he did while here was announce that the capital of Imperial India would be moved to Delhi from Calcutta. Our apartment is a fifteen-minute walk from Connaught Place, one of the focal points for the architectural layout of the new city.

Its very different living in a big city, as you can maybe see from the photos contrasting 55 Babar Road with 365 Lake Street in Auburn. There are sidewalks here! But most of that gets used as parking spaces for motorcycles, as in the photo, or cars. This part of the city has laws that restrict building heights to two and a half stories. For those of who were Being John Malkovitch or Ali McBeal fans, that doesn’t mean that there is a secret half-height floor. But rather, the top floor can only be 50% the square area of the other floors. We have the entire second floor, so the middle balcony in the photo is us. No tree-filled yard (and no Rudy) as at Lake Street, but all the streets are tree lined so right out the balcony we are watching birds. The little enclosure between the front gate and the house is edged with big pots of plants, so reminds me of our back patio. This little part of Babar Road where we are doesn’t go through to much of anywhere, so the traffic isn’t bad. It’s definitely at slower speeds than the traffic on Lake Street.

We are only about six houses in from the Bengali Market circle itself, and there is plenty of bustle there. A “market” means a commercial area where there are shops selling a variety of services and goods. The bigger the market the bigger the variety. This is a quite small market, but still has three food shops, two dry cleaners, two shops selling cell phone cards and digital cameras, an internet shop, magazine shop, and at least three fruit and vegetable shops. Any of you who have the Lonely Planet Guide will see that the highlight of Bengali Market is the Bengali Sweet Shop, and, on the other side of the circle, Nathu’s Sweet Shop. We can highly recommend Nathu’s having eaten dinner of meat pies there twice already.